Welcome to Week 6 and your last forum discussion. Please work hard on this assignment if you wish to improve your final grade in our class. 

Please read the assigned material for this week before tackling this forum assignment. Then, incorporate what you learn in your answers here, citing what you borrow so that other readers can quickly locate and read your sources and confirm your interpretations.

Remember, the discussions are places for you to show us what you’ve learned and that you’ve mastered the material. If you quote from the book, keep your quotation brief — a phrase or short sentence –, mark it off with quotation marks, and cite the author and page number in a parenthetical citation. Though quotations are encouraged in your answers to clinch a point, your words and analyses matter more.

Back all of your claims (points) with historical evidence — names, dates, and events. Evidence is the heart of history as it is in science and the law. Good students use it.

1. What was the global significance of the of the cold war? Identify 3 significant impacts and discuss at some length.

Please read and view the Working with Evidence section for chapter 21 in Strayer, on the “Poster Art in Mao’s China.” Examine the visual evidence — sources 12-1 to 12-4 — carefully. Seeing is as much a skill as writing or reading well and, like them, is improved with care and discipline. Then answer the following questions, drawing skillfully and effectively on the documents (evidence) to back your claims.

2. Based on these visual sources, how would you describe the kind of society that the Chinese Communist Party sought to create in China during Mao’s lifetime? Note specific things. Also, just as importantly, note what is NOT in the posters. Omissions in the historical record sometimes speak more loudly than what’s presented.

3. Based on the historical narrative of chapter 21 and especially on what happened after Mao’s death, assess the realities that lay behind the visual sources 12.1 through 12.4. To what extent do the posters accurately represent the successes of Maoist communism? What insights do these poster shed on its failures? Are posters useful at all in understanding the past?

4. Who was Abdul Ghaffar Khan? Had you heard of him before taking this course and, if not, why was that the case? Think big picture here. Where does he fit into the larger history of the 20th century?

5. How and why did the anti-colonial struggles in India and South Africa differ? How were they similar? Give two significant differences and similarities and discuss each one separately. Show us you’ve read chapter 22. 

6. In the last part of chapter 22, Working with Evidence: Contending for Islam, what issue might arise in a conversation among the five authors represented here, in Sources 22.1 through 22.4? What might be the areas of agreement among the authors? On what points would they probably never agree? Please do your best on this question.